The interpersonal metafunction in French from a Systemic Functional perspective

Systemic Functional Linguistics has frequently been criticized for being anglocentric. Although this question has begun to be addressed in recent years, a large imbalance still remains. In this context Caffarel’s book A Systemic Functional Grammar of French (Continuum, 2006), following on from her 2004 article, is to be welcomed as the first book-length treatment of French in a Systemic Functional framework. The analyses she provides show that in many ways French functions in a manner similar to English, with one major exception, the interpersonal metafunction. According to Caffarel the interpersonal analysis of the French clause is in terms of a Negotiator and a Remainder, where the obligatory components of the Negotiator are the Finite, the Subject, and the Predicator. This contrasts with the usual SFL analysis of the English clause in terms of Mood and Residue. However, further consideration shows that the French clause is amenable to a Mood + Residue analysis, and at the same time English clauses can be analysed in terms of Negotiator + Remainder. It would seem that Caffarel’s suggestion supplies an alternative way of looking at the interpersonal metafunction rather than a structure which distinguishes between English and French.